A few days ago I was engage with building web-based application that intended to discover duplicate data in excel files, at first this jobs look simple, but after knowing the amount of data which will processed (35 Million Data) and stored on nearly 70,000 different excel files, hmm .. This work may not seem as easy as imagined.

A little problem appears when I wish to add some data from .dbf (exported from foxpro) to MySQL, it was a new experience for me. The first move that I usually do when I meet some unreadable file format in ubuntu is go to Ubuntu Software Center and search program using keyword file formats that I want to be opened (example : if you want to open dbf format, you can search program using keyword 'dbf'), Yatai .. as usual Ubuntu Software Center never disappoint and always gives a solution.

Find Application in Ubuntu Software Center

Gnumeric Spreadsheet to Open .dbf
First application that I got from Ubuntu Software Center is the Gnumeric Spreadsheet, Gnumeric is a spreadsheet application that interoperates well with other spreadsheets. you can open commonly used spreadsheet file formats like xls, sxc,csv, dif and more, using this application I can see the contents of .dbf but I can't be directly exported it to .sql (MySQL), all action must be done manually and less time consuming. You can just use Gnumeric Spreadsheet as a dbf reader only, to perform other actions such as exporting to sql you might need another application.

dbf2mysql: export .dbf to sql (MySQL)
Second application that I got from Ubuntu Software Center is dbf2mysql, this application is quite small if compared with Gnumeric Spreadsheet, the size is only 29.1 kB, but even small dbf2mysql is quite powerful. dbf2mysql is designed to perform a specific function that is exporting dbf database format into mysql. I have not tried all of its functions but it seems to be my solution, Some additional information about dbf2mysql can be found in following manpages.